


First Life

by Scribe of Santhoven (RaisingCaiin)



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, How Do I Tag, Mentions of Prostitution, Mild Language, Swearing, all of age despite the addresses, how do non-Silm tags even work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 07:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14207982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/Scribe%20of%20Santhoven
Summary: Kaehlan was still a fighter, in his first life. But although some things don't change from one life to another, others most certainly do.[original characters, pre-campaign backstory, subject to retcon]





	1. do not go to the fey

**Author's Note:**

> The first thing his company is told, just before they are shipped away to fight in a war their liege has promised his own debtors, is don't go near the fey.
> 
> Kaehlan, of course, wants to see more of the fey.
> 
> ~ ~ ~  
> This would never have happened in the first place if not for my DM and fellow players, though I don't know if they really want me to be thanking them for that. Thanks all the same, folks - you are the most amazing inspiration <3
> 
> EDIT: oh snap, I thought creating a pseud would keep Ao3 from sending auto-notices to anyone who'd susbscribed for Silmarillion stuff. Lord. If that's not the case, apologies for the OC spam.

_Don’t go near the fey_ was the first thing they were told, the day before they were due to be shipped out.  

“You want to come back in one piece?” the Major asked, eyeing them like they were green recruits and not one of Lokij’s more seasoned companies with a few green recruits thrown in for spice. “Then you act like it. You keep your eyes to yourselves, you keep your bits to yourselves, you keep your smart talk to yourselves. Questions?”

“Sir?” someone called from the back.

“Pipe down!” Sarge shouted back, sounding angry already. Major probably didn’t mean for anyone to actually question him.

But the voice went on. “If you’re just gonna be lecturing Kaehlan, can the rest of us go now?”

From his place in the front row, Kaehlan couldn’t see who his admirer was. They had a nice voice, though – sweet and piping – so that was promising. To Ileadh’s sighs and Sarge’s yelling, he clambered to his feet, making a show of pulling his shirt from his belt like it was restricting his movement – and, not accidentally, flashing the back rows some skin. He barely made it all the way upright and stretching before Sarge, yelling louder, pulled him back to sitting, but that was still plenty of time to catch at least three sets of admiring eyes on his way down.

So he did have plans for tonight. Nice.

The Major said more, but Kaehlan was no longer really listening. He was too busy planning his route out so that he wouldn’t get collared by the sarge for another of their, erm, _little_ _talks_.  

But he didn’t quite make it. Instead, he got some sympathetic faces and some outright leers as the rest filed out, dismissed to rest for the night before they get whisked away to the Feywilds, but Sarge held him back until even the Major had left.

“You disappoint me, boy,” Sarge sighed. “You really do.”

Kaehlan knew he shouldn’t look an elf twice his age and experience up and down like he did, but – well, sometimes you just had to live the life you had, right? “Sorry, sarge. And I appreciate the offer, but I like ‘em a _bit_ younger.”

Sarge just sighed again. He got like this, exasperated and almost fond, whenever he wasn’t in front of a group larger than his own squad, and Kaehlan had never been quite sure how to respond.

“You go ahead and strut your stuff for the others, boy, but you really could be something if you put that puffed-up chest of yours to good use.”

He was already shaking his head before the sarge could even get to the usual pitch. “Sorry, sarge. You know I’m not here for that.” Kaehlan knew he wasn’t meant to be a leader, no matter what the older soldier thought he saw in him.

For a terribly long moment it seemed like Sarge was planning to continue the usual pitch anyway, but finally he sighed one last time and flapped his hand in a shooing motion. “Go on, then. Out, out!”

Because see? That was the thing: just like Sarge had his pitch, Kaehlan had his. Sarge was here for the glory of Santhoven or the dick of Lord Lokij or gods knew what, but Kaehlan –

Well, Kaehlan was here because he had nowhere else to be.  

But here, at least, the coin was real copper and the meat was probably the horse that the cooks promised it was and the camp followers who plied their various trades in gaudy tents pitched behind Lokij’s forces would accept either one in trade.  

No, Kaehlan had always thought, things could have been far worse.

 

~ ~ ~

 _Don’t go near the fey_ , they were told again the day unseen hands ripped a hole in the crisp forest air and the Major chivvied them right through it, and they stumbled out beneath strange skies where the stars didn’t map against any charts they had and a faceless moon seemed to gloat down on their fear and their awe.  

“This is all Lokij will send?” asked the creature that met them, a pillar of light that eventually resolved itself into approximately the right number of arms and legs and eyes. “Pitiful.”

“We are all that Lord Lokij will send,” the Major repeated, more respectfully. “He must keep some of his forces back to protect his own lands, but he sends his respects and the best of the fighters he can offer.”

Kaehlan bit back a snort. The wood elves that made up this company were good, but other than him and Ileadh and maybe a few other veterans of the border patrols, they weren’t _that_ good. They certainly weren’t the best that Lokij could have sent, and surely their numbers couldn’t really make a dent in whatever war it was that the Major had been yammering on about.

They were just a gesture, Kaehlan figured. They’d fight for a few days until whatever fey lord that Lokij owed a dick-sucking saw how useless they are and sent them back home, where they’d be disbanded back into their usual squads fighting the typical border skirmishes.

Here and now, though, their welcoming party seemed to be thinking much the same. “Some tribute,” the creature scoffed. “A hundred and a half head of underfed wood elves: you won’t even make it to the battlegrounds of the Winter court.”

This heartening message delivered, and the tear in the fabric of the world having served its purpose, the creature dissolved into a myriad of shining sparks that skimmed lightly across the grass before disappearing into the surrounding woods.

And so their company was left quite utterly alone in the middle of a dark, grass-swept field. The ensuing scramble to get fires lit so they could see enough to pitch tents by was probably driven only in part by the uncanny moon.

 “So now we’ve seen one of the fey,” Kaehlan murmured to Ileadh, low, as they worked.

Ileadh, her arms as long and bony as she was herself, elbowed him in the ribs. “Stick with the new recruits or the relief tents on this one, idiot.”

“I didn’t even say anything,” he protested, but he was grinning.

She wasn’t fooled, even in the dim dark. “The relief tents, Kaehlan. You’ll get yourself killed, otherwise.”

He grinned wider – more of a temptation than a deterrent, that – but she was already looking away.

 

~ ~ ~

 _Don’t go near the fey,_ he overheard the other wood elves telling each other, repeating the Major’s words in increasing trepidation as the creatures that they would soon be fighting alongside began to appear. But Kaehlan could see why they would – the fey did not make for comfortable companions, and these were not even the fey that their company had been brought here to fight.

True, at first sight, the fey hardly seemed that much different from them. Oh, there were differences in skin and hair and eye and dress – no two fey that Kaehlan saw appeared in the same combination – but for the most part they stood upright like wood elves, and walked like wood elves, and spoke a single tongue like wood elves.

It was only when they were glimpsed from the corner of the eye that it became apparent how _they most certainly were not wood elves._

Some of them dropped their upright stance as soon as they no longer thought themselves watched. Others seemed to walk normally, but their feet didn’t actually touch the ground, and the grass of the field never so much as rippled at their passage.

For others still, their differences never truly became – well, _visible_ – and Kaehlan could never quite _see_ what made them so utterly alien.

But every one of his senses was screaming, all the same, and it was – exhilarating.

He took to watching from the corner of his eye quite a lot, noting that the fey pitched no tents, counted no supplies. Their weapons, when he could see them at all, shimmered from form to form until he could hardly tell whether he was looking at a sword or a bow or an axe or a glaive, and they seemed to quarrel among themselves more than even fighters normally would. It was – intriguing. He had never seen anything like it, and –

And he needed more.

Ileadh caught him at it and shook her head. “Don’t.”

“That a challenge?” he asked her. Not that he needed one, really, but he still wanted to know if it was.

She snorted. “Hardly. I don’t even know why I bother. You want to get your fool self killed, you go right ahead. Go on, then – step up to one of those things and ask it for a quick fuck! I’m starting to think it won’t make any difference.”

He could feel his grin spreading. “Give me until payday. Unless you think they don’t like copper up here?”

She sighed, exasperated. “Kaehlan, try and get your cock out of your own ass for a minute and listen to me. I heard the quartermaster talking – the Major told them not to bring any coin, either for us or for more supplies. Use your other head and think about that for a minute, hmmm? Any alarums ringing?”

It _was_ odd, but he’d been on campaigns before where they weren’t paid until afterwards, and besides – fewer places here in the Wilds to spend an honest elven copper, right? “You worry too much, Ile. I’ll work around it.”

Some boys would ride on credit, after all, and if they were fellow soldiers, many were happy with extra rations, or drink chits, or even just the night itself, for all that Kaehlan was the sort who preferred the chase, the arrest, the bargain. But whatever their preferences, he had never left a partner unsatisfied or unpaid – a reputation that had spread among Lokij’s forces.

“They can’t be that different up here, can they?”

He could tell that this answer disappointed Ileadh, though he couldn’t quite tell why. “You didn’t listen to a godsdamned thing I just said, did you.”

“Sure I did. No more shinies until we go home, gotta woo with something else for a few weeks. What did I miss?”

“I could slap you upside the head and you wouldn’t be missing a single brain cell,” Ileadh said. She stood and walked away without another word. Kaehlan shrugged, and turned back to watching the fey from the corner of his eye.

 

~ ~ ~

 _Don’t go near the fey,_ Ileadh didn’t say, when she caught him preparing to sneak out of their company’s camp.

“Is it even worth my time to repeat myself?” she asked, crossing her arms as she surveyed the meager preparations he’d been able to cobble together: the last few coppers he hadn’t spent the last night before they’d gotten here, a flask of wine, a couple scraps of bright silk. A few of the brightly-dyed feathers that Lokij’s fletchers always supplied. His hunting knife.

“Depends which part you’d be repeating, but probably not,” Kaehlan admitted, watching her reactions closely, looking for any sign of whether she’d give him away.

But finally Ileadh stepped back. “If you aren’t back before sunrise, whatever that means here, then I won’t be able to cover for you with the sergeant. If you decide that matters to you any.”

He was probably beaming. “You’re the best.”

He was only trying to thank her, but a shadow of pain seemed to cross her face at his words. “We’re all screwed anyway: might as well choose how we go.” Then, in a gesture reminiscent of Sarge’s only a few days before, Ileadh waved him away. “Go, go, before I give in to the urge to knock some sense into that thick head of yours.”

Still grinning, he bundled his meager courting gifts together and slid the bundle beneath his arm. “We’ll talk about whatever’s got a wasp in your ear when I get back, all right?”

“Sure,” Ileadh said. “When you get back.”  


	2. the problem with gifts is they can be misunderstood

There were no official bounds to say where the camp of the wood elves ended and the great dark field peopled by the fey began. Nothing kept the two groups apart but the Major’s words and the company’s fears and a few elven sentries kept sleepless by terror, and all of these Kaehlan was able to bypass easily enough.

So it should not have felt like he was leaving one realm and entering another, as soon as he left the shadow of the last tents. There was no reason why the air should have suddenly felt colder, the wind more predatory, the stars blinking just above his head and close enough to touch even as the sky receded further still.

And yet. And yet.

So they did.

The grass whispered beneath his every step, and he could have sworn that it was not just bending beneath his feet, but instead parting around his boots and grabbing for purchase along them. Very little was visible by the watery light of that uncanny near-obscured moon, but soon enough he could hear the fey, even if he could not yet see them.

_greetings greetings little thing, out so late and all alone_

Curious fingers seemed to run along Kaehlan’s lips as he smiled. “But I’m not alone, am I.”

_not if you do not wish it, no, no_

Strange part-shapes and half-lights glittered in the corners of his vision, but faded when he whirled to try and look head-on. “Let me see you!”

_no fun, always looking looking looking_

“If you’d just give me the chance,” Kaehlan started, ready to protest that they’d find him fun enough if he just had enough light to see who and what he was doing, but the sudden weight of a new sensation distracted him from finishing that thought.

He would have said that it was the sensation of curious eyes, but no, it wasn’t even that. The prickling impression was actually far, far stranger – the gaze of something that did not even have eyes, and yet was watching him, evaluating him, all the same. 

O- _ho_.

Slowly Kaehlan turned, following that sensation toward its source: the forest that bounded the field on two sides. “He _llo_.”

The grass no longer pulled at his boots, but petulant unseen hands snatched at his back and his shoulders as he began to walk away.  

_stay with us little thing_

_selfish silverwood, selfish selfish, stealing our fun_

_feast with us dance with us laugh with us play with us_

The offer was enticing in its very ambiguity, and for a moment Kaehlan almost took his unseen tempters up on it. The apparitions at the corners of his vision were growing stronger, brighter, and he could nearly make out who was speaking to him: shining fey clad in flowing gowns and well-cut shirts, feasting from tables groaning with food and laughing as they whirled in mad dances to tunes he could not hear.

But ahead of him lay the forest, and the mysterious promise of that eyeless gaze. And in the end, Kaehlan would much rather have the tantalizing, the tease, the temptation – would always follow that shivering prickle of animal excitement down his spine.

He huffed and kept walking, and the half-heard voices of the fey in the field died away behind him soon enough.

 

~ ~ ~

The grass gave way as Kaehlan finally set foot in the forest, but the things that took its place – pine and leaf litter, vines, the roots of trees – seemed just as determined to trip him up as earlier the grass had been to hold him back.

But even these little annoyances weren’t enough to dampen Kaehlan’s excitement, for that eyeless gaze had never gone away, and indeed, only seemed to intensify. As he stepped beneath the trees, it expanded to surround him, and he realized with a start that it was as though his unseen watcher was in the trees themselves. He shivered, but pressed on.

“No, that doesn’t scare me,” he murmured. “You’ll have to try a little harder.”

The prickling sensation intensified, and he laughed. “Interested? Come on out, then – let me see you! Look, I brought you something.”

Noticing that he wouldn’t have enough light to see by if he went much further in, Kaehlan stopped in a tiny natural clearing and knelt, setting down the bundle he’d been carrying beneath his arm. When he unwrapped it, though, the little treasures that he’d been able to scramble together before he left the camp looked so much more pitiful than he remembered, and he scowled. Some gifts he’d be able to offer – gods, he did hate this part of the soldier’s lot.  

But then there was a tug at his left boot, and Kaehlan laughed as he threw a corner of the cloth back over his meager offerings, turning to finally, _finally_ set eyes on his tempter. “There you-“

But there was no one there. His boot had simply gotten tangled among the vines in the undergrowth.

Kaehlan frowned as he pulled his heel free. That hadn’t been there a moment ago, had it?

He was still frowning as he stood. In his excitement, he hadn’t noticed until now that the gaze had changed again: where a moment ago it had been all around him, as if coming from the trees of the forest themselves, now he could feel it in several distinct but smaller points – all around the level of his head. But still he couldn’t see anything.

“What’s keeping you?” he asked the forest at large. “Anything you want to see before making your decision?”

And that was when he finally noticed the vines, slithering like snakes down the nearest tree trunks and slipping like quicksilver across the clearing floor.

 “Gods gods _gods_ -“

And then they were on him.

He was yanked to his knees again, and then upended onto his back. He was fast, and strong, but they were faster and stronger – before he could pull even a single arm free, he had been completely restrained.

He bit, he kicked, he struggled, but nothing shifted his sudden bonds. If anything, the vines only tightened with his every movement; Kaehlan was quickly left nearly immobile.  

His breath came faster and faster as he raced through his options. His knife was in the bundle of gifts, and he hadn’t brought another weapon. He hadn’t thought he’d need one.

And then, even as he continued to struggle, he heard it.

_i cannot be bought_

_not by metal and feathers and a bit of silk_

Kaehlan’s thrashing stilled. Insulted pride he could deal with – why, that had sounded almost like something he would say, in explaining how he could take Lokij’s coin to fight in Lokij’s wars!

Kaehlan’s interest in his unseen watcher was returning, vines be damned.

“Neither can I,” he promised, hoarsely. “Be bought, I mean. And those are just gifts. For you. For considering me. I would never buy another’s body if they did not offer it first.”

The whisper of wind among the trees could almost have been laughter.

_perhaps that just means you have never seen something you wanted badly enough_

Was he being – tested? Kaehlan began to struggle again, throwing his full weight against the vines. “No, no, _no_. That’s the acts of lords and princes. I would never-“

And suddenly his next tug was strong enough that he could pull an arm free.  

Or perhaps it wasn’t him, Kaehlan realized as the vines receded one by one, leaving him able to pull himself up and stand, shaking.

“Will I do, then?” he asked, trying for his usual surety but probably falling well short.

_you might_

_come to me again, some other night_

And this time it was definitely laughter that he heard, not the wind, as he stumbled back toward the field and the elven camp. But still Kaehlan did not see who it was laughing at him.  


End file.
